Through my research on this resource rights dispute, and encouraged by the scholarship I touched on in the literature review, I came to observe two main intersections of the relevant networks which are involved in this power interaction. The first significant network intersection I observed was between the private sector (in this case, Nestlé Waters North America) and the state sector (the municipal government of Cascade Locks, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Oregon Water Resources Department, to only name some of the key players), which I go so far as to consider as an integrated private-state network insofar as the private and state networks appear to operate under aligned goals, which I will first consider in the following analysis section. The second significant network intersection I observed was between the public network (often the most amorphous due to less formal organization) and the state network. In order to avoid confusion between the “public” (citizens, voters, activists, and grassroots
organizations) and the “public sector” which would include the state organizations, I will refer to the general public as much as possible as “civil society”, but when the term “public” is used it is not in reference to or including the public sector/governmental institutions.
This distinction highlights an important overarching conclusion of this particular research, which confirms assertions by globalization (CITS) scholars, that the role of the state has moved away from a role as the “governor” and increasingly is forced to play as the
“gamekeeper” at the cites of struggle between large corporations and public bodies. Here we see David Harvey’s geopolitical climate reviewed in the literature section, where civil society and public bodies the world over are increasingly at odds with the private sector at the nexus that the state represents, holding the rules of the game (rights, laws, protocols, etc.) in terms of socioeconomic and environmental resource activities.
42 Private-State Networking and Policy Developments
Extrapolating from the information presented in the historical content section, it is clear that from 2008 onward, Nestlé’s networking activity with the City Council of Cascade Locks (as well as the Port Commission of Cascade Locks) was central to the development of water rights policy. Supporting Castell’s theoretical framework —that network-making power is often the most crucial aspect of power in the network society— the initial presentation by Nestlé Waters North America to the City Council and Port Commission demonstrates the early network construction that proved to be crucial for the continual progress towards the bottling plant and necessary transfer of water rights to either Nestlé or Cascade Locks. That is, the proposal presentation documented in the source from 2008 exhibits Nestlé’s network-making power, which in this case was an aligning of private network and state network goals (at the municipal level), on an economic basis. By switching or linking the traditionally-separate state and private networks, Nestlé would operate through this alliance, from the convergence point in their
interests, to work on pre-existing state institutions.
While the state organizations (be it ODFW, the City Council of Cascade locks, or even the Governor’s office) may have been organizationally undisturbed in the making of this particular private-state network, broader public interest in a return to a healthy local economy (which saw its heyday before the evaporation of timber activity in the region), increased property tax revenues, and job growth, were easily alignable to Nestlé Waters North America’s goals of resource accumulation and a location for profitable capital investment. The creation of what we will call the private-state network was of chief importance in this interaction, and as it was programmed to the aligned goals of the City Council, Port Commission and Nestlé, was clearly oriented towards the building of the bottling plant and the integration of local resources into the
43 global economy.
The dominant economically-based power of Nestlé Waters North America is further evidenced by the vote by the City of Cascade Locks (documented by the January 23 2015
source) to seek ODFW permission to swap of portion of the city’s well water right, as well as the developments of transfer applications submitted by ODFW. With the private-state network cooperating under the goal of moving towards building Nestlé’s planned bottling plant, the city council’s vote in favor of seeking ODFW permission to swap a portion of the Cascade Locks municipal well water right for a portion of ODFW’s spring water right, demonstrates the networked power active in this alliance once it was formed. In order to eliminate an obstacle to the bottling plant permitting process, which had become the ultimate program goal of this private-state network, the city now sought to swap a portion of its water right, forgoing and subordinating other publicly-oriented or environmentally-oriented goals. This point is further supported by the January 23 2015 source documenting the Cascade Locks City Council vote, as we can see that during the same meeting the city council also voted in favor of offering a
negotiated pricing for water for customers using more than 250,000 gallons per month, a level of use that no public interest or citizen would come close to. The vote in the January 23 2015 source demonstrates a change in the tactic of the private-state network, as ODFW’s transfer application T-11109 had become stalled on the technicality of OWRD’s necessity of considering how a gallon for gallon resource trade (instead of a rights transfer) might negatively affect the public.
From the earlier source, documenting on February, 27 2012 of OWRD’s preliminary determination to approve ODFW applications T-11249 and T-11108, we can see the necessary change of tactic by the private-state network to fulfil the dominant programming of the network
44 (building the bottling plant). The preliminary determination by the Oregon Water Resources Department to approve ODFW’s water transfer applications T-11108 (approving two additional diversion sources for the original 10 cfs ODFW water right) and T-11249 (splitting the original 10 cfs water right into two ODFW rights, one for 9.5 cfs and one for 0.5 cfs) but not T-11109 (trading 0.5 cfs of ODFW spring water for 0.5 cfs of Cascade Locks well water, without transferring rights to Cascade Locks), shows the necessity of switching resource acquisition tactics, as T-11109 has not been approved to date. While the state agencies, ODFW and OWRD were (from the information that I was able to gather) not as directly influenced by
communications with Nestlé as was the municipal government of Cascade Locks, these state-level organizations were effectively within the power dynamic of the private-state network.
I argue that ODFW, OWRD and other state-level agencies were functioning as part of the private-state network insofar as their relevant interests were in common with the city’s: namely, the necessary management of local resources and rights/access that had been aligned to the goal (introduced to the newly formed private-state network in 2008) of integrating local resources into the global economy for both state revenue and private profit. While the networked power
dynamics within the state institutional structure didn’t totally yield to Nestlé (manifest in T-11109 stalling due to the state network’s public concerns), we can see that once the private-state network was programmed, “the network has the capability to perform efficiently and reconfigure itself to achieve its goals” (Castells, 2016:12). This is evidenced by the information from May 23 2011, with ODFW filing the third transfer application T-11249 in order to circumvent the issue of considering the public effects of a resources trade.
Between the actions of the Cascade Locks City Council and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, we can see that different levels of the state network were actively working
45 towards the goals of the private-state network. With ODFW modifying and creating new
resource-rights transfer applications, the legal groundwork was being laid so that the city could attain right or access to the spring water that was coveted by a multinational firm. The end result, in terms of policy and resource flows, of this private-state network cooperation has yet to materialize and appears to be years from either canning or approving the bottling plant plan.
However, what is clear is that as early as 2008, a private-state network had been formed toward a particular project. Although the planned bottling plant has yet to get the green light from the state-network (as the Hood River County ballot measure 14-55 has currently superseded the power of the any of the government agencies or offices, to legally bar the access desired by Nestlé), state network activities including the rights transfer applications and their resulting changes in resource management had clearly been motivated under the aligned goal of the private-state network. This motivation was based in economic power (the potential investment provided by Nestlé Waters North America), to commodify and integrate the local water resource into the global economy.
Public/Civil Society-State Networking and Policy Developments
However, one should not adopt a unilateral conception of the power dynamics in this policy and resource-rights dispute. Civil society (public) activists, environmental collective groups and local political organizations employed several counter-power strategies in combatting the Nestlé-proposed program. Of these, the network-making power of public activist groups and civil society actors should not be overlooked, as the efforts of the Local Water Alliance, Food and Water Watch, Bark, and the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, among others, represent the backbone of the counter-power efforts with strategic cooperation toward a common goal of
46 preventing the construction of the bottling plant.
Network-making power was even escalated to the Governor’s office when activists staged a protest and rally hoping to convince the Governor (and in turn the rest of the state network) that its goals should be aligned with the public/civil-society network more than the private network. This was after the City of Cascade Locks had officially approved the plan for the bottling plant and necessary changes in resource management, as documented in the
information from the September 21 2015 source. This counter-power network-making strategy of goals alignment appears to have been temporarily effective because ODFW officially
scrapped its plan to swap the water rights after receiving a letter from the Governor’s office that cited concerns of regional drought and limited public recourse after a rights transfer, following the hierarchal dynamic of the networked power in the state network (documented by the November 6 2015 source).
Despite this official desistence by ODFW claiming that it would scrap its plan and pursue avenues that would allow for public recourse in times of drought, it appears that the private-state network and public (civil society) networks both continued to seek avenues to achieve their goals, evidenced in the December 23 2015 and December 30 2015 sources, as both networks appealed to the legal protocols built into the state network. While OWRD appealed to the higher authority of the Oregon Office of Administrative Hearings in a consolidated case with ODFW concerning the preliminary determination by OWRD (approving the transfer applications T-11108 and T-11249), civil society activists went to work to collect and submit enough
signatures to qualify a measure for the Hood River County ballot (14-55) that would ban
commercial bottling operations of more than 1,000 gallons per day in the county (which includes the city of Cascade Locks). I classified both of these activities as part of the dynamic of network
47 power because here, both the private-state network and public (civil society) network are
attempting to harness the existing power of the legislative protocols and power of legislation built into the state structure, over its particular components, in order to fulfil their respective goals. The goals of the state network had been aligned towards moving forward on building a bottling plant, and despite the disapproval of Governor Kate Brown, pursued potential legal protocols that would override the Governor’s position. At almost the same time, the public network of activists and civil society organizations (in a counter-power pursuit of the opposite result) were seeking to use the network power of the legal protocols of the state network that would assert county level legislation over municipal level activity. Both of these counter-power activities appear to have been effective for their network’s respective goals, if only in that without them, their respective avenues to successful policy change would have significantly withered.
This dynamic of network power had been recurrently important for public civil society actors and groups trying to access the state network throughout the dispute. Several legal proceedings, one of which the September 22010 source documents, were the site for these power-dependent interactions where public contestation of the activities of ODFW and OWRD were confined to the content of the transfer applications, due to the communication protocols of the legal proceedings. In this particular instance, public contestation voiced by civil society members and activist organizations about the proposed bottling plant and the potential sale of municipal public resources to a private international corporation were completely dismissed from legal proceedings, as legitimate protest was limited by legal protocols, to the content of the rights transfer applications in question. As Nestlé was not an official party to these proceedings
between ODFW and OWRD (applying for a rights transfer), public comments either
48 disapproving or approving the bottling plant were legally irrelevant.
While there were some instances where the public activist network (relatively noncentralized) and state network had aligned goals, public actors ended up using what networking power they had in trying to first exclude the City of Cascade Locks from the state resource rights network and then to exclude large water bottling operations from Hood River County. Food and Water Watch and other civil society activists began circulating a petition in Oregon to try to pressure the State of Oregon to refuse the proposed water rights exchange with the City of Cascade Locks (referenced in the November 5 2009 source). Without the network power of legal protocols over the components of the state network, however, the power of this action couldn’t go beyond public pressure. In what is likely the most important counter-power interaction to date, the first September 21 2015 source documents how the Local Water Alliance and other activists operationalized the network power of county legislation (ballot measure 14-55) to assert public networking power and ban commercial water bottling in Hood River County.
While the private and state networks appear to be considerably more aligned by their shared goal of constructing the bottling plant thus far, the ballot measure represents an important counter-power action as public civil society activists hope it will assert the counter-power of publicly-interested legislation over the privately-designed plan within the state network.
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